LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Hobby Lobby: Hobby Lobby Creative Center
built 267 days ago
By the early part of the 21st century Hobby Lobby was opening a new store almost every two weeks, and the average Hobby Lobby store had about $1.2 million worth of inventory at any given time. Rather than constructing new retail buildings, the company tended to purchase abandoned buildings or to lease existing retail space. By so doing, the company is "able to quickly enter the market, much quicker than had they started from ground zero," Mickey Ashmore, president and CEO of United Commercial Realty, told the Dallas Business Journal. The practice could ... occasionally take credit for revitalizing a shopping center in dire need of an anchor retail presence. Hobby Lobby affiliate H. L. Construction was responsible for turning a store site into a Hobby Lobby Creative Center, as well as for expanding/remodeling existing centers.
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Hobby Lobby began in Oklahoma City in 1972 with 300 square feet of retail space. It has since grown to 351 creative centers located in 28 states with projected sales of $1.5 billion in 2005. Hobby Lobby is one of America's fastest growing arts and crafts chains and one of Oklahoma's largest employers with 2000 employees and growing. This dynamic corporation is headquartered in Oklahoma City in a 2.6 million square foot manufacturing, distribution and office complex.
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In 1999 Hobby Lobby opened 30 new stores in ten new states. Each new store typically created about 50 jobs, and each Hobby Lobby Creative Center held between 45,000 and 65,000-square-feet of retail space. The Dallas Business Journal reported in August 1999 that the company's growth projections included operating 1,100 stores by 2003, a figure that figure never materialized.
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Hobby Lobby Creative Center